The new list of Fellows for 2021, recently announced by the Royal Canadian Academy of Sciences, has enlisted Zhang Xuebin, the alumnus of Hohai University.
Used to be the Co-chairman of the World Meteorological Organization and the WCRP Expert Team on Climate Change Detection and Indices (ETCCDI), the lead author of IPCC SREX, the Fifth and Sixth Assessment Report, Zhang now is working as a Senior Scientist at Environment and Climate Change Canada, Chairman of the International Conference on Statistical Climatology, and Co-Chair of the World Climate Research Program (WCRP) Major Challenges Extreme Weather Climate Program. With long-standing commitment to extreme climate change, its detection and attribution, and statistical climatology, Zhang is well recognized as one of the most significant climate scientists around the globe thanks to his contribution to associating man-made greenhouse gas emissions with extreme temperatures and precipitation variation.
Academician Zhang stands as the first scientist in the world to successfully detect an increase in surface temperature at regional scales caused by enhancing greenhouse gas emissions aroused by human activities. With the collection, sifting and combination of data from various observation stations and in-depth analysis on them, he published the foremost article on the effects of human activities on global rainfall distribution in Nature in 2007. Besides, evidence of the anthropogenic impacts on extreme territorial rainfall on the northern hemisphere was discovered by Zhang's research team in 2011, serving as a cover article in Nature. Their debut academic viewpoint, attributing extreme rainfall variations on lands to human greenhouse gas emissions, has emerged as a focus of the American Geophysical Annual 2013. A collection of extreme climate indices (named ETCCDI) for observation and simulation proposed during international cooperation led by Zhang has been in wide application to climate scientific researches.
Enrolled into our university in 1981 for his undergraduate studies in terrestrial hydrology, Academician Zhang remained here in 1985 for his Master's degree before entering the University of Lisbon in Portugal for his PhD in 1992. In his memories of schooling time in HHU stand out teachers' serious, patient and responsible teaching and scientific research attitudes. He mentioned that it was the habit of beginning from simple things and finishing them carefully developed in HHU that has exerted a significant impact on his future research work. Now his every return to Nanjing is followed by a visit to HHU and academic reports for teachers and students here.
The Royal Society of Canada (RSC), one of its most significant scientific groups set up in 1882, is composed of the Academy of Arts and Humanities, the Academy of Science, and the College of New Scholars, Scientist and Artists. Among other colleges in Canada and around the world, RSC recognizes talent with excellent contributions to advice-making for the society and promotion for knowledge and innovation culture. A total of 89 new Fellows were enrolled in this year.
